My Motorola Droid cellphone died yesterday. I’d been having occasional problems with it. Sometimes, I’d lose web access, and I’d have to cycle the phone’s power to get it to work again. Yesterday, when I turned the phone off, it wouldn’t turn back on again.

The situation falls into the cracks, because my warranty ran out in January, and the insurance only covers loss or damage, not problems with the phone itself. I’m not eligible for a reduced price upgrade until September, and it would cost me $290 to replace my phone with the same model of refurbished Droid. Since I’m so close to an upgrade, I’m going back to a previous phone.

The last phone I used was a Blackberry Pearl, but I gave that to my daughter when her phone died some time ago. I do still have the phone I had before that, which is a Samsung flip phone. This means it’s a bit over five years old. However, it still works and the batteries seem to hold a charge, so I’ll be using it. No email or web, though, but I’ll save the cost of the data plan until I get a new smartphone.

Since a refurbished Droid costs so much, I’m wondering if I can find a refurbisher to sell mine to, so that it’s not a total loss for me.

I got my cast off last Friday morning, and got a boot to replace it. Life is better now, both for me and for those around me.

For me, it’s better because I can get around better now that I can put weight on my right foot. I can make do with one crutch if I need a hand free, and can even hobble a few steps without crutches. Now that the cast is off, I don’t have to spend time sealing a plastic bag over my leg to take a shower, so I’m not only taking them more often, but I’m able to scrub my right leg, and let me tell you, it needs it. I’ve got so much skin coming off it’s like I subjected my lower leg and foot to multiple sunburns.

The leg is ugly, though. Between the swelling and the loss of muscle tone, it looks like a flabby pipe – pretty much cylindrical all the way down, and no definition visible. That’s going to change as I accustom myself to using it again. It’s slow going, though – after two months of “don’t use the right foot,” I find myself forgetting to put it down and suddenly realizing that I’m moving around on just the left leg and the crutches.

I don’t wear the boot all the time; I have to exercise the ankle joint for flexibility, and the boot prevents that. Dr. Shannon talked about “writing the alphabet” with my toes, but I tried that once, and decided that I preferred just doing twists, tilts, and rotations. They seem to force a greater range of motion than practicing “air penmanship” with my foot. Then again, maybe some Palmer Method exercises … ?

Then again, it’s more science-fictional than fantasy. I found this photo of the fake “Blue Screen of Death” Easter Egg in Chrome over at Doug Ross’s place. One of the first things I noticed was that the filenames are faked, and many of the ones that aren’t puns (serial/cereal, for example) are references to science fiction (HeartAu, rdaneel, and wntrmute among them) or popular culture. Some are even dual-reference – “bowser” can be considered a pun on “browser,” and also associates with “shanana.”

There’s also a disclaimer hidden in the hexdump, which you can decipher yourself, or drill down into the link chain to find. Be careful, though, and remember: Cape does not enable wearer to fly.